For the past several months, ill health and hospitalizations have silenced my mouth and my pen. I’m glad to say that all is much better now and, spirits willing, this 81-year old man, mouth and pen, will be around for at least a few more years.
GERRYMANDERING
This past week-end (1/29/12), it was said that congressional races are pretty much solely at issue only in PRIMARY elections. The speaker was, I believe, former Republican congressperson Tom Davis, a 5-term Virginia incumbent who also served as Chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee and now serves as President/CEO of the Republican Main Street Partnership. The reason for primary (not subsequent general) elections being all that decisive, is, of course, that, throughout the country, congressional districts are so gerrymandered that only one Party (Republican OR Democrat) is able to win the general election in a particular congressional district.
Proving the point, I cite three states, Florida, Michigan and Ohio.
Despite last year’s constitutional amendments (passed by 63% of the voters), amendments intended to curtail gerrymandering, Florida continues to perpetuate congressional and state legislature gerrymandering. Florida generally runs 50-50 (Republican and Democrat) in statewide elections. For 2012, population growth has given Florida 2 additional congressional seats (total of 27 seats now as compared to the prior 25 seats).
One would assume that, with Florida’s 50-50 voter split, there would be a 13-12 congressperson split in 2002-11 and a 14-13 split for 2012 et seq. That asumption, however, is absolutely wrong. The Florida 2011 congressional split is 19 Republicans/6 Democrats. For 2012 et seq, per recent legislative redistricting maps drawn by the gerrymandered Republican Florida state legislature, the congressional split for the next decade is likely to be 20 Republicans/7 Democrats.
Political scientists opine that a congressional district which is set up to have 55% or more registered Republican or Democratic voters is a safe seat for the party which has the 55%. In Florida, there are at least 14 districts which have the 55% + Republican edge, with an additional 6 seats having a 50% + Republican edge. How does the Republican state legislature (itself gerrymandered) achieve such a result (often with support from Democratic incumbents who are given packed districts that assure re-election)? The state legislature packs upwards of 80% African-American Democrats into one congressional district (e.g. Meek/Wilson), giving African-Americans a lock to win the packed district but greatly diluting Democratic chances to win a majority of the overall 435 US congressional seats.
Political scientists also opine that incumbency gives an elected official upwards of another 5% voter advantage. Republicans, to buy Democratic votes in the state legislature and/or support among Democratic congresspersons, also draw up election maps to advantage the lesser number of Democrats who then support the redistricting map because their own re-election has been assured. In recent congressional elections, incumbents have won as many as 431 of the 435 seats; non-incumbents, only 4.
Illustrative of the situation is the Florida congressional seat of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her former boss Peter Deutsch.
Dems Repubs
Deutsch: 1992 55% 39%
1994 61% 39%
1996 65% 35%
1998 100% No opponent
2000 100% No opponent
2002 100% No opponent
Schultz 2004 70% 30%
2006 100% No opponent
2008 78% 22%
2010 60% 38%
In 2002, a Florida US District Judge wrote that the redistricting then drawn by the Republican state legislature was “a raw exercise of majority legislative power” to guarantee skewed partisan outcomes. The Court found that the state legislature’s “overriding goal … was to adopt a plan that would maximize the number of districts likely to perform for Republicans.” (Martinez v. Bush, 234 F. Supp.2d 1275 [S.D. Fla. 2002].)
Turning next to Michigan, prior to the new census Michigan had 15 congressional seats, 9 Republicans and 6 Democrats. With population decline, Michigan has lost 1 congressional seat for the new decade leaving it with 14 seats rather than 15. In a generally Democratic state (Obama won with 54% of the vote in 2008), the gerrymandered state legislature (now Republican in both the state senate and house) has drawn up a new congressional map that probably leaves the Republicans with a continued 9 seats and thrusts the only lost seat on Democrats who will now have only 5 seats rather than 6. The new map, in fact, will probably require incumbent Democrats Gary Peters (old 9th District) and Sander Levin (old 12th District) to run against one another in one new district; or incumbent African-American Democrat Hansen Clarke (old 13th District) to run against against, perhaps, Peters if Peters foolishly chooses to run against Clarke rather than Levin. Republicans were astute enough to make Clarke’s new district (the new 13th) 57% African-America and John Conyers’ new district (the new 14th) 58.5% African-American, although the new Conyers’ district is described as hideously gerrymandered (including Pontiac along with Detroit although several miles and the new 13th district separate the two cities).
Turning finally to Ohio, despite a slight increase in population in the current census, the state is only one of two in the nation to lose 2 congressional seats for the coming decade, going from 18 to 16 districts. Ohion is described as 50-50ish Republican/Democratic state, with Democrat Ted Strickland having recently won and served as governor and Obama having won the 2008 presidential election there.
Despite what is described as a highly partisan Republican gerrymandering a decade ago for 2002-12, the old 18 congressional districts were split 10 Democrats/8 Republicans in 2008-10 and, even after the Teacup impacts in 2009 knocked off 5 Democrats, a 2010 split of 13 Republicans/5 Democrats.
For the coming decade, in a gerrymandered plan said to be crafted by US House Speaker John Boehner, the new reduced number of 16 districts is said to likely be 12 Republican seats and 4 Democratic seats. “Ten districts have a Republican partisanship greater than 56% with the four Democratic safe seats packed in such a way that Democratic candidates can expect to win on average by margins greater than two-to-one. The lone competitive district has a district (Democratic?) partisanship of 46.14% which falls barely within our toss-up range of 46%-54% for open seat elections.” The Boehner plan packs Cleveland Democratic African-American congressperson Marcia Fudge’s district that assures her re-election (stretching anew from Cleveland to Akron) and forces Dennis Kucinich to run against ultra-liberal Democratic Toledo congressperson Marcy Kaptur that includes parts of Cleveland and runs all way over to Toledo some 60 miles away; one of these 2 Democrats must lose his/her congressional seat. Democrat Betty Sutton also loses her seat (between Cleveland and Toledo), and either Republican Steve Austria or Mike Turner lose a seat, all resulting in a new 12 Republican/4 Democratic congressional delegation.
SUMMARY
The gerrymandering described above assures that, for the next decade (and maybe more), we will never have a US House of Representatives that would support creation of 10-11 million CCC/WPA jobs under FDR (which would be 20 million jobs nowadays in a nation more than twice the size of FDR’s) or even the millions of CETA jobs under Nixon/Ford; that will not support single-payer health for all Americans but continue to support 30% administrative cost private sector health insurance carriers and grotesque profits for pharmaceutical companies; that will support, however unwinnable, wars founded on untruths about WMD, that last decades and cost trillions of dollards, cost thousands of American lives and wounds. We’ll be assured of unregulated tax-dollar subsidized for-profit, private sector businesses and limited protection for American workers.
In sum then, gerrymandering does matter, does really constitute a denial of equal protection of the law, and does frustrate the few remaining years of this 81-year old man’s life.